The hay is in the barn

CRESPELLANO JULY 24—The hay is in the barn, the corn is looking good and the flowers are in bloom. The 'fruttivendole' (road-side produce stands) are out in force. Instead of dodging cars stopped along the side of the road for Ladies of the Night, I've been careening around huge combines, tractors and other farm implements that have been working like mad to get the harvest in or avoiding cars stopping abruptly to buy 'duroni' (a kind of cherry) or watermelon. My favorite field is the onion field near San Felice su Panaro. I love the fragrant odor of the onions waiting to be picked up when I ride by on my bike. I'm really curious to see how they harvest the pears. For most things, including potatoes, they use machines. They must pick the pears by hand. This will be quite labor intensive as there are many pear orchards in the area.

The weather has been tolerable. I guess you just get used to not having air conditioning after a while. At any rate, the humidity is usually lower here than at home even though the temperatures have been in the low thirties during the day and cool off nicely to about 18 or 19 degrees at night. When we are here in Crespellano, we have to battle the mosquitoes. Most houses don't have screens, another thing I've wanted to buy. However, they're not so bad in Crevalcore.

Seemingly everynight here in the summer there are 'sagra' (folk festivals) or just regular town festivals or fairs. Last month was the week-long Festa dell'Unita' hosted by all of the left-wing parties in Emilia-Romagna. You buy a ticket and there are all of these outdoor eating areas where you can get traditional cuisine prepared by the local church ladies. This past week in Crevalcore, there was the Fiera or fair. This worked much in the same way; there were bands, vendors and places to get traditional food. They make quite a ruckus until after midnight. So we came here to sleep. In Italy, you have to get used to the density of cities and villages. Most of the houses and apartments are spaced very closely together. In Crevalcore, the facing building is less than two car widths away. No one has AC so you can here everything. The TV at night, kids screaming, dogs barking and the old ladies calling to each other in the morning.

Italy is one of the oldest countries in the world in the sense that it has one of the oldest populations and lowest birth rates. It never ceases to amaze me how many older, retired, gentleman farmers with their porkpie hats go buy on their way to the caffè. Everyone walks to the store or takes a bike to the bar. There is much traffic, too. The population is going down but people are richer so they have more cars per family. Remember that when I speak of Italy's recession and competitivity issues it is still one of the eight richest countries in the world. So everything is relative.

I've still been on the lookout for jobs. It's not a good situation, especially in the summer. Everyone is gone. I keep busy, looking and doingg translation work for friends at the Bologna Chamber of Commerce. I've really been riding a lot. About 13 hours a week now. I take four-hour rides into the Lombardy region, then come home, clean up the house, cook dinner, read and watch bad TV. Stefania is gone a lot, travelling all over Europe. She's going to Germany tomorrow.

I'm sure people are on edge in England concerning the terror attacks. But people here don't seem too concerned even though Italy is allegedly next on the list. Like most people, if I want to go into the center of town, you either sweat your ass off walking 10km or you park and take the bus. No choice. I took Stef to the airport the day of the London bombings and didn't notice any increased security except for a truckload of Itlaian soldiers smoking cigarettes in the parking lot. There is a long history of suffering attacks and invasions at the hands of friends and foes alike in Europe so I think most people take the increased threat level in stride. There isn't the 24-hour a day fear-inducing media coverage like at home. After the London bombings they covered it, to be sure, but only during the regularly scheduled broadcasts. I do feel sorry for all of the Muslims here. If something does happen, I'm sure people will tend to paint with a broad brush and be a bit more hostile towards immigrants. The only people that are ever likely to give me any trouble are know-it-alls who have never been anywhere and don't speak any foreign languages. But those people are in every country. I've never had any trouble so far. Half the people on my block are immigrants and get up early and work hard. I'm not too worried. When it's your time, it's your time. If I were in London I might not take the train but other than that I have a greater chance getting hit on my bike than stressing about terrorism.

It's almost August which means vacation time. Stefania and I might go to the South of France where we have friends. She needs a break; she's exhausted. I need a break from my break. I keep saying that I'm not on vacation because a vacation implies that you have a job to back to. Right now, we have to find 'pensione' for the cats. After August, I'll have to sit down and evaluate the situation again and see how much longer I can take being unemployed.

Of accents and other things

CRESPELLANO JULY 18—Sorry haven't written for a bit. I've been busy running back and forth between Crevalcore and Crespellano. Stefania's parents are still at the beach. Franco took a day off from sailing and came home for a day last week to go to the dentist, other than that, we don't see her parents much. Moreover, there's no room at the inn, so to speak. They have had one of the 'bimbi' (kids or grandkids in this case) everyday for the whole summer. Virginia is allegedly putting on quite a little belly with 'nonna' (grandma) filling her full of 'pappa' (baby talk for pasta).

Just an interesting (to me) aside on the Italian language. It is basically pronounced as written once you learn that 'ch' makes the 'k' sound, that 'gli' is pronounced like '-illi-' in the English word 'million' and that double consonants must be voiced. Take these three words for example: 'papa' (pope); 'pappa' (baby talk for pasta); 'papà' (dad). To a native English speaker they might look like they are pronounced in the same manner. But, in fact, there are three separate pronunciations. The first one is easiest; just pronounce it like it looks. On the second, you must remember to hit the double 'Ps' (like we say 'bus stop' in English, with two distinct 'Ss'). The third has an accent which means to give that syllable emphasis ('pa-PA'). Accents in Italian either denote stress or are 'diacritical' which is fancy talk for saying that they are there to differentiate two words that are written and pronounced alike but have different meanings. 'Sì' with an accent means 'yes.' 'Si' without the accent means 'itself' or 'one's self.' Thus, 'nono' (one 'N') means 'ninth' and 'nonno,' two 'Ns' means grandpa. The funniest example that helps you remember how important it is to distinguish double consonants is the word 'penne' and 'pene'—one means a kind of pasta and the other means something that boys have and girls don't. I'll let you figure out which is which. So, pay attention the next time you order that kind of pasta in a restaurant and have a real Italian waiter. If he chuckles, you picked the wrong one...might want to stick with the pizza. People will most likely understand what you mean from the context but it's still funny. After you've had that happen to you a couple of times, you'll definitely have more compassion for the immigrant struggling to pronounce a word correctly who's holding up the line at the store. Stefania always laughed at me until I mastered my own personal Calvary, the word 'bagagliaio,' which means trunk, as in where you put your bags in the car. Try it out: 'bag-ahl-yeye-oh' with the 'gli' pronounced as noted above.

Summer has also had me exploring the reasons for the terrible, to me, phenomenon of dubbing TV shows and movies. I mention this again for we are in the dog days of summer. In Italy, this is REALLY the off season. So there are even more old crappy American movies and TV series than usual that have been dubbed into Italian. We went to the movies the other day and turned around and walked out. We were at the Meridiano, a new multiplex near Bologna. There were eight movies and all of them were American. I didn't come here to watch dubbed American movies, so we left.

Apparently, dubbing has its roots deep in the history of early-Twentieth century Italy. With the advent of radio (thanks to Signor Marconi, from Bologna) and talking pictures around 1930, Italy had certain dilemmas. First of all, at that time, most Italians didn't speak Italian. Italy was mostly an agricultural nation. Most people were uneducated and spoke there native regional dialect, which in most cases is not mutually intelligible to someone from the neighboring region. (Remember, modern Italian is basically the arbitrary selection of the Florentine dialect of Tuscany as the model for the modern tongue.) Furthermore, early sound technology was not good, which complicated the making of talkies. Finally, Benito Mussolini and his fascist party ruled the Penninsula. He might have made the trains run on time and he was also instrumental in the development of the RAI (Italian radio and eventually TV). Il Duce was determined that Italians would speak one language. This made sense, practically speaking. If a movie was made in the Roman dialect, other people would have no chance to understand the movie. By dubbing the movie into modern Italian, one could have actors from all over Italy make the movie and then have professional voice-over actors loop in the dialogue in the studio. This had the added benefit of making it easier to avoid the problems created by inferior microphones used at the time.

As the years passed, more and more Italians went to school where they learned "correct" Italian and were able to buy radios and go to movies. Two things happened. The regional dialects began to die out as a sort of 'pseudo'-standard Italian accent emerged. That is to say. a certain, accepted accent was used in movies, on the radio and on TV, that hadn't really existed before. This is much like the famed BBC received pronunciation (RP) that grew with the development of modern communication technology in the United Kingdom. To us and Brits alike, it sounds kind of haughty and artificial. Much is the same in Italy; most people really don't talk that way. In recent years, in England and in Italy alike, one has been able to hear more and more industry professionals speak with their regional accents. I watch the BBC quite often and am amazed at the diversity of the staff and the accents that one hears.

Italian movies and TV shows, however, still by and large dub most things with people who speak a little too perfectly. In the early days of Sophia Loren's career, she was thought to have too strong of a Neopolitan accent so another actress would loop in her dialogue in the studio. For many decades. one voice-over artist would follow the career of Hollywood stars and dub all of their movies. One actor would exclusively be the Italian voice for John Wayne or Gary Cooper etc. This is no longer the case. It's very expensive to dub films whether they are home-grown or foreign. There are a whole host of studios in Rome who are in competition with one another and only dub films and TV shows. Therefore, it is no longer possible for one actor to only do the voice of, say, Nicholas Cage.

Over time, Italians, who are quite good at dubbing, got used to this phenomenon and pay it no mind. I'd say that three-fourths of the material on TV here is foreign. Just imagine if this were the case in the U.S. and there was no dubbing. That would be a heck of a lot of reading subtitles, especially for children and older people!